Veterans Day 2026:
Wednesday, November 11.
It stays on November 11 whatever day of the week that falls, so there is no substitute day this year. Federal offices, the post office and most banks close. Most shops and restaurants stay open, which makes it a good day to send a card rather than a day to plan around a closure.
The short answer: Veterans Day 2026 is Wednesday, November 11, 2026. Nothing shifts, because the federal rule only moves the holiday when November 11 lands on a Saturday or Sunday — and it does not until 2028. If you are sending a card or making something, you have three weeks to do it, and a Letter sheet at 300 DPI is 2,550 × 3,300 pixels.
Written by the Tool Pantry team on 21 October 2026, using the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs history page, the OPM 2026 holiday schedule, and the state sales-tax laws cited below. The print sizes are exact conversions from inches and millimetres at 300 DPI. We did not send anything to the post office, so the mailing guidance points to USPS rather than quoting a delivery date we could not test.
The date, and why it does not move
November 11, 2026 falls on a Wednesday. Veterans Day is always observed on November 11 itself — the Department of Veterans Affairs is explicit that it is observed on November 11 regardless of the day of the week, and only the closure moves, under one rule: when November 11 falls on a Saturday, federal offices close on the preceding Friday, and when it falls on a Sunday, they close on the following Monday.
2026 needs neither. The next time the day shifts is 2028, when November 11 is a Saturday and federal offices close on Friday, November 10. Both 2026 and 2027 land midweek, so neither moves.
The state layer is separate from the federal one. Veterans Day is a state holiday in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Wyoming do not observe it at the state level, and Mississippi, Rhode Island and Texas name it Veterans’ Day/Armistice Day.
What closes, and what stays open
| What | Status |
|---|---|
| Federal offices | Closed |
| Post offices (USPS) | Closed — no collection, no delivery |
| Banks | Most closed; check your own |
| Schools | Decided by the district, not by the federal calendar |
| Public transport | Often runs a holiday schedule — check your local operator |
| Private employers | Not required to close; many stay open, and federal employees get the day off |
| Shops and restaurants | Usually open — unlike Thanksgiving or Christmas |
That last row is the practical one. Veterans Day is a federal closure, not a retail holiday, so if you are buying something for someone who served, expect the store to be trading — and expect it to be quieter than the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Why November 11
The date comes from the armistice that ended the First World War. Hostilities stopped at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918 — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, which is where the date comes from. The first commemoration in the United States, proclaimed by President Wilson in November 1919, called for a brief suspension of business beginning at 11:00 a.m.
Congress made November 11 a legal federal holiday in May 1938 and called it Armistice Day, honouring the veterans of the First World War. After the Second World War and the Korean War, Congress changed the name to Veterans Day on June 1, 1954, so that it would honour every American veteran rather than only the ones from 1918.
Then the date almost moved. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 shifted four federal holidays to Mondays, and Veterans Day was scheduled to become the fourth Monday in October. The first observance under the new rule was Monday, October 25, 1971, and the confusion was immediate: most states kept celebrating on November 11 anyway. President Ford signed the law returning the observance to November 11 in September 1975, and from 1978 it has been November 11 in every year since.
The sales tax wrinkle
A number of states run their own Veterans Day sales-tax exemption, and the rules are not the same from one state to the next. In Florida the exemption covers clothing and footwear priced at $60 or less per item, and the retailer has to be able to see proof of veteran status. Maryland enacted a tax-free day for 2026 that exempts sales to veterans of items priced under $2,000, with the veteran showing an ID card that says so.
Other states set their own limits and their own rules for what a veteran has to show. If the price looks wrong at the till on November 11, the state’s revenue department is the place to check — and it is worth checking before you buy, not after.
What to make, and at what size
Three weeks is enough time to make something that arrives on the day. The numbers that decide the job are the pixel dimensions and the resolution:
| What you are making | Finished size | Pixels at 300 DPI |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate of appreciation | Letter, 8.5 × 11 in | 2,550 × 3,300 |
| Certificate of appreciation | A4, 210 × 297 mm | 2,480 × 3,508 |
| Greeting card | 5 × 7 in | 1,500 × 2,100 |
| Poster | 18 × 24 in | 5,400 × 7,200 |
| Social post (Instagram portrait) | 1080 × 1350 px | Not a print size — leave it at screen resolution |
| Link preview (Facebook, LinkedIn) | 1200 × 630 px | Not a print size — leave it at screen resolution |
A print shop wants 300 DPI so the image has a real inch of detail for every inch on the paper. A phone screen or a social post does not need it — a 1,500-pixel-wide image on a phone is already more than the display can show, and upscaling it to print size only wastes file size. If you are not sure which number you need, the DPI calculator works it out from the physical size and the pixel count you have.
When the file is done, the usual job is getting it through a portal or an inbox. A Letter page at 300 DPI saved as a high-quality JPEG runs to roughly 1 to 3 MB, which fits inside the Gmail attachment limit and most form limits — but a heavy photo background can push a full page past 5 MB, and some portals cap uploads at 1 MB. The image compressor and the bulk resizer both run in your browser, so the file never gets uploaded to do it. For a certificate form someone sent you as a PDF, filling a PDF form handles the typed fields.
Mailing something to a service member
Mail addressed to an APO or FPO address travels through the military postal system, and it takes longer than a normal domestic letter. USPS publishes a set of dates each year for holiday parcels to military addresses, and those dates differ from the civilian ones — check the USPS Military Mail page for the current year rather than assuming the standard deadline applies.
Two practical rules that do not change from year to year: parcels sent to military addresses generally may not contain perishables or medications, and a package that cannot be scanned and routed in the US tends to be returned to the sender rather than forwarded. If the date matters more than the sentiment, send early — the week of the 2nd is already inside the slow period for military mail.
Add it to your calendar
Download the 2026 US federal holidays (.ics). The file holds eleven one-time, all-day entries using the observed dates, so July 3 appears and July 4 does not — and Veterans Day appears as November 11, because in 2026 it does not move. Import it and set the alerts in your calendar app.
If you are planning the year ahead, the 2027 holiday calendar is already out, including the three dates that move next year — and Christmas lands on Friday December 24 for federal staff who work Tuesday to Saturday.